Descriptive Statistics/Tests of Significance

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Choose one of the three problems below, and answer the questions (I have put in red ink the important concepts you must understand to complete this exercise.):

1. A sample of adults was asked about their opinions of how credible TV news is compared with to print news. Each person was asked to rate his/her agreement with the following statement:

"Television news is more trustworthy than corresponding news reported in the newspaper."

Responses from the participants were as follows:

5              1              2              1              3              1              4              3              2              1
2              2              5              3              1              4              1              2              1              2

a. Construct a frequency distribution.

b. Determine the mean, median, mode, and range.

c. Write an interpretation of the mean.

d. If you wanted to compare men's and women's opinions on this question, what statistical test would you use? Why? 

HINT: Which test depends on the variables' levels of measurement.

2. New college graduates were asked to keep track of how many hours they spent in interviews to find their first professional jobs. They reported their interview times as follows:

a. Determine the n, mean, median, range.

b. Write an interpretation for these data.

c. If you wanted to determine whether graduates of state universities spent more time looking for jobs than graduate of private school universities, which statistical test would you choose?  Why?

3.  A study compared the communication apprehension socres of high school leaders with those of non-leaders. The leaders (cheerleaders, sports team captains, stu­dent government leaders) reported the following communication apprehension scores:

15                      20           14           19           6              17           15           17           19           13           11           11

The non-leaders reported the following communica­tion apprehension scores:

16                      14           19           17           18           23           26           16           29           30           15           16

a. Determine the n, mean, and range for both groups of students. 

b. What statistical test would you use to compare students leaders with non-leaders in terms of communication apprehension?  Why?

c. Write an interpretation comparing these two groups of data.